Page 16 of Sands of Atonement

“What the fuck is going on here?” His eyes were full of fury as he took me in. His nose flared beneath the scarf.

I narrowed my eyes.

He narrowed his.

Oh, shit.

“Get. Out.” The man slowly walked toward me, hesitating, as if I were a disease.

“Make. Me,” I bit out.

His eyes flickered for a moment.

He took one more step toward me, shoulders tense.

My chest heaved. Air was sucked from my lungs.

He looked as if he could fight a storm and beat it into submission.

“You have”—he lifted a finger—“one minute before you regret this, you despicable harlot.”

Blood rushed into my head. I wanted my fist to ruin his pretty face. “Name-calling has never worked on me. Try again.”

“Ezra! Finish the woman! Let us go back to our fighting!” Brakan shouted from our left, but I barely heard him.

Ezra.

Ezra.

I looked deeper into his dark eyes, and my heart raced to my throat.

Was it really him? It couldn’t be. The Qahl would not be down here in the arena, like a commoner. He would have been on the platform, on the dais, dressed in fine robes, surrounded by guards. It was meant for royalty. Not to mention, the fighters would be treating him like a Qahl and not like one of them.

“Ezra?” My mouth filled with a bitter taste.

A flash went by in those all-too-familiar brown eyes, but he didn’t answer me.

He reeled his finger back slowly and took another step toward me. My body urged me to step back, but I stood frozen at the sight of him. I slowly scanned his body and how large it was, how different he seemed.

The last moments I had seen Ezra came rushing to mind, the last moments of seeing my family alive.

“Isn’t that the Qahl’s name?” I spat.

“What about it? You’re still a woman in my arena. Get out. You have thirty seconds.”

Definitely Ezra.

I clamped my fingers against my palm to keep them from shaking. “If you can get me out of here, then I’ll leave and won’t come back. If you can’t”—a suggestive smile formed on my face—“then I’ll continue to fight here as long as I wish.”

“Oh, yeah? I don’t make bargains with delusional women who think they can fight in this bloodthirsty arena, nor do I want to. Get out.”

“Coward.”

He tilted his head. “What did you say?”

“You’re a coward.” I raised my voice so the surrounding men heard.

The men murmured in hushed voices, and the air turned heavy and violent.